Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German painter of the artists’ colony at Worpswede near Bremen and one of the most important early Expressionists. Repeated stays in Paris brought her into contact with the work of Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, and she painted peasant women, children, still lifes and simplified, monumental self-portraits. Her Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding Anniversary of 1906 is thought to be the first painted nude self-portrait by a woman. She died at 31, weeks after giving birth to her daughter.